Pop Idol shot Ant and Dec into a different stratosphere when it came to TV presenting.

Suddenly they were the darlings of prime time Saturday evening telly – an honour they still hold 13 years and countless awards later.

Looking back at 2001, Dec reminisces: “It was a crazy year as we were doing Pop Idol, had the meetings with ITV and came up with the idea of Saturday Night Takeaway.

“It was pretty shortly after that as well another team from ITV came to see us and said we have this idea for another show we would love you to be part of – we are going to take a load of celebrities to Australia, dump them in the jungle and film how they get on. It’s called I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. The first thing Ant said was the title is rubbish, that will never stay!”

Ant laughs and says: “A working title, they will get rid of that. Now you couldn’t imagine it being called anything else.

ITV came up with the Win The Ads as a spine and end for Takeaway. We loved it and knew it was the show the BBC couldn’t make, so we worked on that.

“If it wasn’t for Pop Idol I don’t think we would be doing any of these shows as that was the show which launched us into prime time.”

Dec adds: “We launched Idol, came up with Saturday Night Takeaway featuring Win The Ads and we were heading to Australia to do the first series of I’m A Celebrity.

“To be looking at that now, to still be doing two of those shows 13 years later and Britain’s Got Talent, which is kind of a progression of the Pop Idol format, is quite amazing really.”

It was during their time on Pop Idol they rekindled a friendship with Simon Cowell, whom they had first met as a record executive on CD:UK, and if he had his way the lads would have been making a record for him too.

Dec takes up the story: “We had a meeting about doing a song for him, the song for the show for Takeaway. A theme tune. He was very charming, as he always is. We got on really quickly, straight away, but didn’t see him for a long time after that. It never happened and then of course Britain’s Got Talent came up.